If his kisses leave Joey
out of breath ('panting', as Kaiba sneers, adding that he even -sounds- like a
dog, before Joey shuts him up by giving his tongue something else to do than
wag insults at him), that's just because Kaiba has no sense of timing whatsoever.
He simply doesn't know when to stop and knock it off already, be it in a verbal
sparring bout or a kiss.

Kaiba also has big lungs,
of course, that allow him to go without air far longer than normal people.
(Kaiba's a windbag; everybody knows that. Joey just never thought it'd ever
prove such an annoyance when he'd kiss the guy, though he could have known
Kaiba'd find a way to pester him even when Joey is forcing him to refrain from
speaking.)

When Kaiba kisses him,
Joey's arms tend to sneak around Kaiba. Not, however, because Joey holds any
special affection for Kaiba, since that's pure rubbish; it's common knowledge
that Joey -hates- Kaiba, and will probably do so until the day he dies.

It's just that Kaiba's a
pushy kind of person. If there's no wall behind Joey's back, Kaiba pressing his
body against him will likely push him over. And Joey's just not the type of guy
who'll stand for anyone pushing him over, least of all some rich, snobbish CEO.

Thus, to keep his balance,
to prevent Kaiba from making him fall, Joey puts his arms around him in
something that might look like an embrace, but most definitely isn't. Hugs are
to be shared between people who like each other, such as Anzu and Yugi.

On occasion -well, more
often than not, actually- Joey gets this strange, fluttery feeling in his
stomach, either during a kiss or right before it. This, he blames on Kaiba's
bad sense of timing again.

For some reason, Kaiba
never appears to get hungry, the way normal humans do. Lunch-breaks seem to be
there merely for him to amuse himself, either by goading Yugi into another duel
(unless Anzu has already whisked her boyfriend away to some secret location) or
by bugging those people who -are- in need of regular nutrition, like Joey.

Thus, at exactly the
moment when Joey's about to faint with hunger after four hours of boring
classes, Kaiba snatches his lunch away and demands him to focus on something
else instead. Normally, Joey'd have been able to count on Yugi and Anzu to
distract Kaiba for at least ten seconds -long enough for him to gobble down at
least half his food- but with them having snuck off, and Honda too busy making
eyes at Otogi, while pretending it's actually one of the cheergirls he's
interested in, Joey's left on his own.

Probably, one of these
days, he's going to empty his tray of food over Kaiba's head, just for having
no consideration at all for Joey's needs. Not on a Monday, of course, since
they usually have chocolate-mousse for dessert then, and not on a Tuesday,
Wednesday or Thursday, since the main-dish is really good on those days, and
not on a Friday either, since he might earn a detention for Saturday-afternoon
then, and detentions on Saturday-afternoons suck big time. But on some other
day, he'll show Kaiba that nobody interferes with his meals unpunished.

Not that Joey needs any
specific reason to be pissed off at Kaiba. The man is utterly unsufferable; he
mocks and taunts Joey in everything he does, be it by solving some
maths-problem in under three minutes, while Joey has struggled with it for
three hours, before throwing his books at the wall and calling Anzu for help,
or by walking into the class-room without even looking in Joey's direction.

It's Kaiba's special
talent, this endless ability to make Joey want to grab his shoulders and slam
him against the wall to yell at him. Not that Joey really thinks that to do
such a thing would change anything, or make Kaiba leave him alone and stop
ignoring him all the time, but it might relieve his own frustrations a little.

Why Kaiba, of all people,
would have developed and perfectioned this odd gift, isn't quite clear to Joey.
You'd think that a guy like Kaiba would rather work on his programming-skills
or even his non-existent social ones; those, at least, might come in handy one
day.

But no, Kaiba has to be
stubborn and impractical. He'd rather be capable of driving Joey completely
insane with his mere nearness than of carrying a normal conversation. Or of
kissing Joey like the two of them are actually in love, like they don't mean it
when they assure each other how utterly and deeply their mutual dislike is.

If he looks at it that
way, Joey has to conclude that Kaiba not being that great a kisser is actually
a good thing. He'd almost begin to like Kaiba for it ...

OWARI

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